“... the scandals are those of vulgar corruption, with members of the Administration using their power and position to line their pockets and to block the actions of justice. In England there are usually sexual undertones to our scandals, even where treason is involved. In France, where politics and social connections are always a factor, nothing is ever ...”

“... The cut-rate versions of that proper Prince Charlie’s Poundbury, and the cookie-cutter Queen Anne of these new suburban cul-de-sacs are of a piece with the plastic-mullioned fake sash windows and panelled doors now implanted in the Brutalist blocks Hatherley adores, both evidence of the fact that the masses are now privileged with the bad taste of the ...”

“... two sensitive areas. One should not act passively if under attack – sharks respect size and power. Yet humans go on being doggedly scared of sharks – much to the annoyance of their supporters on shore. People are sanguine about driving, even though crashes are an everyday occurrence. Yet one isolated shark hit will produce demands for shark nets or ...”

“... published on its own by Woolf’s Hogarth Press in 1917 (‘It has the living power, the detached existence of a work of art,’ Woolf reported in her diary). And Woolf got inspiration about rhythm and sound from Mansfield (who was a practising musician and had planned to be a professional cellist before she became a writer), helping her ...”

“... a coarse and cruel tyrant, but the deliverer of his people and the founder of the modern state. Anne Boleyn wasn’t the innocent victim of a monster’s caprice, but a nymphomaniac and serial adulteress who was properly tried and legally executed. Thomas More, the genial philosopher, was not a saint but a sadistic bigot. The real Mary Tudor wasn’t the ...”

“... a round or oval portrait a couple of inches wide. The diminutiveness, of course, is part of its power. A miniature exemplifies the compositional ideal of multum in parvo, a lot in a little: ‘A hand or eye/By Hilliard drawn is worth an history/By a worse painter made,’ John Donne wrote in 1597. By a ‘history’ he means one of those ...”

“... could make careers happen. As a book editor at Knopf and the editor of the Quarterly, he had the power to publish his protégés, the clout to be the casting director of a new generation. Working without a pulpit were other top-notch talent scouts and star-makers, such as Gary Fisketjon, the Random House editor who created the trade paperback series Vintage ...”

“... also have worked for Escoffier, but all that is certain is that he moved to England with his wife, Anne, in 1886. From London restaurants he went into the household of the 7th duke of Newcastle and then undertook a succession of ventures, including keeping a boarding house. Some suggestions that his marriage was unhappy and his wife mentally unstable are all ...”

“... a minor degree of physical effort, three, four, five days or longer elapse before full muscle power is restored’, and stated that this phenomenon ‘is virtually a sheet-anchor in the diagnosis of ME and without it a diagnosis should not be made’. Many consultants who see ME patients advise them to use the pain as a guide to gauge exactly what they ...”

“... it, and tonight, returning from the opera, we are mortified to find we are too late for supper. Anne Vaughan, our organiser, braves the kitchen and eventually a waitress takes pity on us and gives us some bread and ham and a bit of dog-eared salad which we take upstairs in plastic bags. ‘You must be very hungry,’ says a man in the lift. ‘What country ...”

“... a tenuous similarity of shape) that Scott actually used the tomb as his model. But such is the power of the Soane legend that his inspiration is taken for granted; and the red kiosk is illustrated time and again in studies of Soane, as proud proof of his legacy to modern Britain. Soane’s architecture, no less than ‘Soane the man’, has always provoked ...”

“... over. The selection was made by John Elderfield and his team – Ann Temkin, Joachim Pissarro and Anne Umland (the first two are newcomers to MoMA).* Elderfield has worked in P&S for years, under the directorships of both William Rubin (1973-88) and Kirk Varnedoe (1988-2000). Yet Elderfield’s final show in the old building, Modern Starts (2000), was cause ...”

“... was to transform Jews into historical actors: sovereign, legitimate, endowed with a sense of power and agency. But the tendency of Israeli Jews to see themselves as eternal victims, among other habits of the diaspora, has proved stronger than Zionism itself, and Israel’s leaders have found a powerful ideological armour, and source of cohesion, in this ...”

“... the beginning, the index of a mental force unmatched in these early Histories. Richard’s real power surely emanates – as the sinister wooing of Anne will at once make plain – from the symbolic (though of course historical) crookback in itself: from the oddly undeceptive, doggish body that humps and thumps its way ...”

“... violations of fundamental constitutional principles – the unchecked expansion of executive power, the utter disregard for habeas corpus and defendants’ rights in general, the warrantless mass surveillance of millions of citizens and the legitimation of torture as a military tactic. To warriors against terror, the Bill of Rights had become ...”